There is usually an upper limit for electric power that is supplied to, for example, a server rack accommodating multiple physical servers, and when electric power exceeds the upper limit, a circuit breaker cuts the power. Hence, when the power consumption of physical servers increases, it is desired to reduce the power consumption of the physical servers so as not to exceed the upper limit.
Reducing the load of a physical server is effective for reducing the power consumption of the physical server. FIG. 10 is a graph illustrating a relationship between physical server load and power consumption. As illustrated in FIG. 10, the power consumption of a physical server increases approximately in proportion to the load. Thus, if a virtual machine (VM) running on a physical server under a high-load condition is migrated to another physical server, it is possible to reduce the power consumption of the high-load physical server.
In the related art, there is a technique in which, in response to a request to limit the amount of electric power to be consumed in a power consuming system in a specific period, with respect to a virtual machine running on a server included in the power consuming system, a request for reporting the usage plan of the virtual machine in a specific future time period is sent to the user of the virtual machine. With this related art, it is possible to take measures based on the obtained usage condition of the server in the specific future time period, and therefore, the related art technique facilitates reduced power consumption. The related art is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2016-177651.